Read Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation

Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation

Kyle Edward Williams

4.9/5 (14434 ratings)

Description:The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism.Recent controversies around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and “woke capital” evoke an old the Progressive Era vision of a socially responsible corporation. By midcentury, the notion that big business should benefit society was a consensus view. But as Kyle Edward Williams’s brilliant history, Taming the Octopus, shows, the tools forged by New Deal liberals to hold business leaders accountable, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrowly focused on the financial interests of shareholders. This inadvertently laid the groundwork for a set of fringe views to become that market forces should rule every facet of society. Along the way, American capitalism itself was reshaped, stripping businesses to their profit-making core.In this vivid and surprising history, we meet activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were “business statesmen” who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Williams reveals that before the “activist investor” emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within.As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, “stakeholder capitalism,” still dominates our headlines today. Williams’s necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy’s tangled relationship with capitalism.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation. To get started finding Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: 297

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Release: 2024

ISBN: 0393867242

Description: The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism.Recent controversies around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and “woke capital” evoke an old the Progressive Era vision of a socially responsible corporation. By midcentury, the notion that big business should benefit society was a consensus view. But as Kyle Edward Williams’s brilliant history, Taming the Octopus, shows, the tools forged by New Deal liberals to hold business leaders accountable, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrowly focused on the financial interests of shareholders. This inadvertently laid the groundwork for a set of fringe views to become that market forces should rule every facet of society. Along the way, American capitalism itself was reshaped, stripping businesses to their profit-making core.In this vivid and surprising history, we meet activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were “business statesmen” who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Williams reveals that before the “activist investor” emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within.As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, “stakeholder capitalism,” still dominates our headlines today. Williams’s necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy’s tangled relationship with capitalism.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation. To get started finding Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Special Offer | $0.00

Special Offer! | $0.00

Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation

Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation

More Books

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

EVO: The Evolution of a Woman

EVO: The Evolution of a Woman